Local Marketing to Transplants Focuses on Lifestyle & Living on Less
'Thrive on less?' How can people live small when housing keeps going up? A quick analysis of 20 cities shows wide variability in housing costs. Data galore!
The blizzards of ‘78 and ‘79 and a partner, who was ready to bail on the Midwest, were my motivating factors when I moved from Columbus to Tucson with my cat and her kittens. I loaded my rusty Corolla with cameras and darkroom equipment, clothes, gardening tools, and my bike on the back. He drove his Volvo station wagon with his belongings, camping equipment, two canvas chairs and the other cat. We had sold everything else to provide seed money to get established in Tucson, a picturesque Southwestern city with a major university and a hip music scene that we had discovered on vacation.
We were 30-something professionals with college degrees when we chose to leave Ohio. As such, I was intrigued by the Southern Arizona websites aimed at enticing young people — like us — and businesses to relocate here. This is the second of three articles on economic development marketing in Southern Arizona. Maps Show Southern Arizona Business Incentive Districts But Not the Money was published on August 8. Look for an article on marketing to businesses next week1.
Marketing to Young Professionals Is about Lifestyle & Living on Less
I must say that I bristled when I saw the flashy “Thrive on Less in Tucson” slide show on the Sun Corridor’s homepage. Ugh. Sun Corridor, you’re giving me flashbacks to my Dad’s warning about moving to a right-to-work state. My first job offer in Tucson was from a rinky dink ad agency, that offered me half what I was making in Columbus as a professional photographer, for a design agency, to do a job that required more work and lacked the basic health benefits.
Compared to Columbus, Tucson wages were lower, and the rent was significantly higher in 1981. As you can see from the Sun Corridor relocation calculator below, not much has changed when you compare Tucson and Columbus. I ended up comparing Tucson to several other cities, and the results were fascinating.
The calculator says living in Columbus is 15% less expensive than Tucson, with housing costs a whopping 30% more in Tucson. I compared Tucson’s cost of living to 19 cities, spread across the country. I chose Columbus intentionally, but the other cities were chosen more randomly. Except for adding Phoenix, Miami, Seattle and Los Angeles as Big City comparisons, I stuck with medium-sized cities and tried to have a wide geographic distribution.
Housing cost was a huge deciding factor in overall cost of living. For example, housing in Columbus is 30% less than Tucson, while Portland is 35% higher than Tucson. In contrast, Flagstaff’s cost of living is 9% higher than Tucson, but the housing in Flag is 22% more. There were other surprises. Who knew it would be more expensive to live in Bozeman, Montana than it is to live in Miami? Montana is a new playground for the wealthy, and that is inflating housing costs in that vast, once wide open rugged state.
Out of my small, mostly random unscientific sample of 19 comparison cities, Tucson’s overall cost of living was less eight of them, more than five of them and about the same as six of them. The calculator has at least 100 cities that can be compared. It’s curious that in my small sample of 20 cities that — except for the extreme outliers in cost, Seattle (+51%), LA (+56%) and Charleston, WV (-72%), — swings of 20-30% in housing prices appear to be common when you look at housing across the country. You can see in the bar graph above that overall cost of living varies from +31% more than Tucson to 18% less, but housing cost varies from 56% more than Tucson to 72% less.
This may sound naïve, but that much variation in housing costs from state to state doesn’t seem healthy for the country’s economy as a whole — particularly when the Federal Reserve keeps upping interest rates.
If you eliminate the three outliers from the equation and look at the remaining 17 cites, there is still a 81 point gap between Portland (35% more expensive than Tucson) and Wichita (46% less expensive than Tucson). What’s going on here? Why such a big gap? Besides perhaps hipness stereotypes or blue state/red state differences.
My theory is there are other forces at work that account for the difference in housing costs from one city to another — like business tax incentives, deregulation, wages, and what the market will bear in that area. Which ones can be controlled to keep prices in line with what people can afford?
I believe the presence or absence of business tax incentives and deregulation/preemption can definitely impact overall affordability, housing costs and housing availability. Kansas destroyed its economy and housing prices fell several years ago after it passed the Flat Tax, which is a giant tax giveaway for the rich. (Arizona Republicans passed the Flat Tax in 2022. Watch out for the impact of the Flat Tax. We’re already losing millions.) Special tax incentive districts offer developers layers of tax breaks for the same property.
In this February 2022 blog post, I outlined four preemption bills that should be repealed (like preemption of inclusionary zoning, rent control and short term rental deregulation) and suggested four other bills to keep people housed (like transparency in rental fees, elderly property tax assistance fund, legalizing adult use marijuana in apartments and a 10% annual cap on how much rent can be raised without major changes).
Phoenix and Tucson are definitely not the most expensive or the lease expensive cities in this comparison, but there are steps the Legislature and local governments to protect affordability, increase affordable housing stock, guard against evictions and put guardrails on tax giveaways that could bring more real estate speculation and higher prices.
Here is the cost of living comparison between Tucson and 19 other cities. Data from the Sun Corridor Cost of Living Calculator — an extremely helpful, free tool — were gathered on August 17-18, 2023 via screen shots, embedded at the end of this article. Data from the calculator come from the US Department of Treasury’s Cost of Living Index.
More Expensive than Tucson: Denver (+6% overall, +23% in housing); Flagstaff (+9% overall, +22% in housing); Burlington (+10% overall, +21% in housing); Miami (+14% overall, +30% in housing); Bozeman (+15% overall, +35 in housing); Portland (+16% overall, +35% in housing); Seattle (+30% overall, +51% in housing) and Los Angeles (+31% overall, +56% in housing) are more expensive than Tucson.
Less Expensive: Albuquerque (-12% overall, - 20% in housing); Columbus (-15% overall, -30% in housing); Memphis (-18% overall, -30% in housing); Wichita (-14% overall, -46% in housing); and Charleston, WV (-16% overall, -72% in housing) are less expensive than Tucson.
Same as Tucson: Phoenix, Austin, Bismarck, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee have about the same cost of living as Tucson.
Salaries & Job Descriptions Missing
The overall Thrive in Tucson website, which is separate from the Thrive on Less page, is glitzy but not overdone with bells and whistles and swirling type. It’s heavy on lifestyle with cool photos of Tucson, testimonials, videos and info blocks but thin on cost of living, salary ranges, job descriptions and leads on actual jobs in Southern Arizona. There’s good coverage of tech and the University of Arizona. The location cost calculator is linked but is not as prominent as on Sun Corridor’s homepage.
To move, people need to know what type of work to expect. Back in 1981, we took a six-week tour of the US to determine where to live. We took interview clothes and resumes with us on vacation. We used the Arizona Daily Star’s Top 200 list of Southern Arizona employers as our guide. In our old-school, analog way, we did do our homework.
Twelve “Notable Employers” (above) are featured on the Sun Corridor Thrive site, along with causes they support like STEM education. Where is the information about what these corporations do in Southern Arizona, employment opportunities with them or the qualifications they’re are seeking in employees. I know many Tucsonans under 45 who are struggling to find good-paying jobs here.
People who are considering moving here need information about the actual job market and salary expectations before relocating. “Living on less” is a bit misleading because, as the Cost of Living Calculator shows, housing costs, in particular, are all over the place in the US.
Moving across the country is a huge undertaking and not one to be taken lightly. I think potential transplants need more information about salaries, job opportunities, climate change and water in the Southwest.
MORE EXPENSIVE CITIES
LESS EXPENSIVE CITIES
CITIES THAT ARE THE SAME: Phoenix, Austin, Bismarck, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. As stated earlier, I didn’t check every city or every state. Have fun trying your hand at this excellent location planning tool.
I have some street cred in marketing. My career and my small business focused on marketing communications. Marketing and public relations were still important after I moved into public health and worked in prevention.